# What is the first sentence from the book you are currently reading? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [April 20, 2017, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858 "2017-04-20T16:51:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 78
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2021, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1547 "2021-04-21T01:07:47Z")
I love the Blandings Castle books! Have you read _Summer Lightning_ and _Heavy Weather_ yet? They,re my favourites by Wodehouse. (_Weather_ is a direct sequel to _Lightning_) ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2021, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1548 "2021-04-22T19:29:49Z")
“Marcus Lepidus, Tribune of the Cohors Thraciani Tertio and the chief Roman officer in Bononia looked out northward from the walls of the fort his men were stationed in and watched the columns of smoke rising from various places in the distance.” _Rolling South_ - Peter Rhodan ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2021, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1549 "2021-04-23T15:20:08Z")
“Here beginneth a Pratica, very helpful to all who have to do with commercial art commonly known as the abacus.” translation of _The Treviso Arithmetic 1478_ ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2021, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1550 "2021-04-23T21:45:54Z")
As a teenager, Franklin Edward Kameny easily observed the problem. _The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America_ by Eric Cervini ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2021, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1551 "2021-04-23T23:22:30Z")
_**Grantville October 1631**_ Vladimir Gorchakov pulled his horse up as he saw Boris Ivanovich Petrov stopping to look around. _1636: The Kremlin Games_ , by Eric Flint, Gorg Huff, and Paula Goodlett ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stainless_steel_rat/32/5727_2.png) [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1552 "2021-04-24T03:16:30Z")
Wosnan is a paradise on Earth, or at least a paradise in North Korea. _The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un_ by Anna Fifield. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1553 "2021-04-24T17:56:39Z")
I should read this–I thought I’d read all of the Blandings Castle books, but I’m sure I didn’t read this one. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2021, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1554 "2021-04-24T17:58:46Z")
“The shuttle arrives at 7:00 a.m. sharp, but on a Tuesday morning in Culver City, California, the hotel lobby begins to fill much earlier.” _Answers in the Form of Questions: A Definitive History and Insider’s Guide to Jeopardy!_, by Claire McNear ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2021, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1555 "2021-04-25T18:36:13Z")
“If Jessica Soule had known how close the bears were, of course she wouldn’t have gone outside that afternoon, no matter how damn hot her living room got.” _A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears)_ by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2021, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1557 "2021-04-26T15:19:25Z")
Anne Jefferson studied herself in the mirror, then turned sideways and spent a few more seconds with the examination. “The Masque”, by Eric Flint First story in _Grantville Gazette VI_, edited by Eric Flint ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2021, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1558 "2021-04-26T17:53:10Z")
“Something wants to eat you,” called Almost Brilliant from her perch in a nearby tree, “and I shall not be sorry if it does.” _The Empress of Salt and Fortune_, by Nghi Vo ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Hedonia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ann_hedonia/32/319_2.png) [@Ann\_Hedonia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Hedonia)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2021, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1559 "2021-04-26T20:14:17Z")
We’re currently reading the same book. Cool! ETA: since your post is three weeks old, maybe not. But cool still. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2021, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1560 "2021-04-26T20:25:49Z")
I shut the door of the old Victorian behind me, and the stuffy atmosphere closed in: overheated, dry, and redolent of mothballs. _Winter Tide_, by Ruthanna Emrys. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2021, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1561 "2021-04-26T21:43:44Z")
> [@Ann\_Hedonia](#): > > We’re currently reading the same book. Cool! > > ETA: since your post is three weeks old, maybe not. But cool still. I’m starting the third one. I waited until the entire trilogy was released because I hate waiting a year between books in a series. Or, worse yet, starting a series that never gets completed. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2021, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1562 "2021-04-27T17:26:44Z")
“She’s painfully slow, so I often have to stop and wait while she examines some roadside weeds as if she were reading the biography of a famous dog.” From “Walking My Seventy-Five-Year-Old Dog” in _Whale Day and Other Poems_, by Billy Collins ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2021, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1563 "2021-04-28T03:54:05Z")
“The consumption engineer is the big job of the immediate future.” Followed by “He will outrank the sales manager and give orders to the production manager. It is not his job to sell what the factory makes, but to teach the factory to make what the consumer will buy.”._—Legendary adman Earnest Elmo Calkins, 1930_ _ **The Sounds of Capitalism: Advertising, Music, and the Conquest of Culture** _, by Timothy D Taylor. ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/50100/1/277.pdf ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2021, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1564 "2021-04-28T12:54:16Z")
_If the old cliche is true that “a picture is worth a thousand words”, we have a 500,000-word volume in front of us here._ – Selling the Sunshine State: A Celebration of Florida Tourism Advertising by Tim Hollis ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2021, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1565 "2021-04-28T19:26:25Z")
“It was at the Great Exhibition that I first saw my cousin, and even then I could not be think of it as a convergence, not merely of the great new powers of industry and machines with those of hill and tree, but of different times.” _The Hidden People_ by Alison Littlewood ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2021, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1566 "2021-04-30T20:43:05Z")
“Our story begins in a run-down bar in Key West, not so many years from now. The bar is not the one Hemingway drank at, nor yet the one that claims to be the one he drank at, because they are both too expensive and full of tourists.” _The Hemingway Hoax_ by Joe Haldeman ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2021, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858/1567 "2021-05-01T14:43:43Z")
“Growing up, we had a fan in our apartment that made a loud clicking noise.” _A Most Beautiful Thing: The True Story of America’s First All-Black High School Rowing Team_, by Arshay Cooper. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=77) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-first-sentence-from-the-book-you-are-currently-reading/784858.md?page=79)